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The head of the Diocese of Bridgeport, Conn. – once a right-hand man to John Cardinal O’Connor – is a leading candidate to succeed his ex-boss as leader of the Archdiocese of New York, a church source told The Post.

Bishop Edward Egan was O’Connor’s auxiliary bishop in charge of education from 1985-88 before becoming his counterpart at the Diocese of Bridgeport.

“The key officials within the Archdiocese have all been notified,” said the source, who added that nothing was being made public immediately “out of respect to O’Connor.”

Asked who will be the next archbishop, the cardinal’s spokesman, Joseph Zwilling, said, “I have no idea when a successor will be chosen and named.”

But a priest at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the seat of the archdiocese, did say that “a lot of people mention [Egan] as a successor. He’s highly thought of here.”

In Bridgeport, clergymen had high praise for Egan.

“He’s a wonderful person, a good leader and a good priest,” said the Rev. James Smyka, the co-pastor at St. Michael the Archangel Roman Catholic Church.

“He’s been fantastic with this diocese.”

Egan, 68, a scholarly traditionalist who was born in Chicago, is well known in Vatican circles.

Before joining O’Connor’s staff in 1985, he had worked various ecclesiastical jobs in Rome, including a stint as a judge on the church court that decides on marriage annulments.

Once in New York, Egan made headlines when he took on the Board of Education’s sex-ed curriculum, which he claimed was doomed to failure because it did not teach that all nonmarital sex is wrong.

He also condemned a board plan to dispense contraceptives at school health clinics.

The plan, he said, sent the message that “promiscuity is acceptable no matter what your age, as long as you use drugs and devices to avoid pregnancy, and as long as you’re willing to kill what’s in the mother if you become pregnant.”

Egan, a classically trained pianist, was ordained in Chicago in 1957 and later served as secretary to Chicago’s Albert Cardinal Meyer before departing for Rome in 1972.

Another top candidate to succeed O’Connor is auxiliary Bishop William Francis Murphy of Boston.

Murphy, 59, is considered a financial whiz – an important quality for someone managing an archdiocese as big as New York.

He’s well-versed in Vatican politics and he’s been active in the interfaith movement, which O’Connor championed.

In Boston he made a name for himself as an outspoken critic of the news media and liberal political causes.

Murphy, a Boston native, taught theology in the Vatican in the 1970s and served as undersecretary of the Pontifical Justice and Peace Commission from 1980 to 1987.

In that year, he returned stateside and took a post in the Boston Archdiocese.

Murphy became a priest in 1964, after attending Harvard and St. John’s Seminary and the Gregorian University in Rome.

Other contenders include:

* Archbishop Ed O’Brien, 60, a former secretary to O’Connor and his predecessor, Terence Cardinal Cooke. O’Brien is now the archbishop for Catholics in the armed services.

* Bishop Henry Mansell, 62, of Buffalo, who, like Egan, is a former auxiliary bishop of New York. Mansell is always described as a humble, easygoing priest who is very well-liked by New York colleagues.

* Archbishop Justin Rigali, 64, of St. Louis. Rigali is a former Vatican aide and was said to be a favorite of the pope.